Time to Change
by AlaskanFan
Summary: This story is set post-series - May, 1988. Lee and Amanda celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary in February, 1988. Philip celebrated his 15th birthday in March, 1988. The mystery marriage has been revealed and Amanda's family knows what the Stetsons do for a living.


**Time to Change** – by AlaskanFan

This story is set post-series. Lee and Amanda celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary in February, 1988. Philip celebrated his 15th birthday in March, 1988. The mystery marriage has been revealed and Amanda's family knows what the Stetsons do for a living.

 **May, 1988**

It was a gorgeous Monday on Maplewood Drive – birds singing, sun shining, and two boys growing fast into young men. Philip and Leatherneck had begun working to restore a classic 1965 Mustang that Lee and Amanda had given Philip for his fifteenth birthday. Their theory was that Philip could learn about car repair while investing sweat equity in the candy-apple red beauty. Ideally, the restoration project would take at least a year.

The scent of motor oil and the clank of tools greeted Jamie as he rounded the side of the house and he removed his helmet as he neared the car. Hanging his skateboard on the hooks in the garage, he asked, "Do you want to stay for dinner? It's my turn to cook and I'm making a chicken stir-fry." He bent double and wiped the sweat from his face with the bottom edge of his favorite Star Trek t-shirt.

"Sounds good, but I have a few things to do at the office. Maybe another time." It amused him that neither of the boys called him by name. They started by calling him "Mr. Nelson" which totally messed with his self-image. He tried to get them to call him "Leatherneck" but their manners had been so deeply ingrained that they could only manage "Mr. Leatherneck" which might have been even worse than "Mr. Nelson." In the end, they quit calling him anything at all. "Let's get this tidied up for today, Philip. Then you'll have to get to your homework. Your mother won't be pleased with the progress we've made on the car, if your grades suffer while she's gone."

"Oh, man! Just when we're really havin' fun, you have to push the homework. I can't wait until I'm grown and I can quit studying all the time." Even as he griped, Philip started gathering tools and tossing them gently toward the toolbox.

"What makes you think you quit learning when you become an adult?" Leatherneck looked up briefly, then resumed the task of properly stowing the tools.

"Lee doesn't keep learning. He just shouts at the computer like shouting will make it do what he wants."

"Now, see, that's a thing about Ace you need to understand. He doesn't like learning too much, but he likes **_knowing_** a whole lot. He's used to being the best at everything he does, so the normal mistakes of being a beginner frustrate him all to pieces. If he's ever forced to slow down long enough to master the computer, he'd be an expert in no time."

"Yeah, doofus, Lee's real smart and he's always reading foreign magazines and political stuff to keep learning." Jamie accompanied his point with a backhanded swat at Philip's stomach. Since Philip had cut off the ribbed bottom edge along with the long sleeves of his previously too small Redskins sweatshirt, the remainder of the shirt didn't quite reach his waist. The shortened shirt and his sagging sweatpants left enough bare flesh for Jamie's swat to land with a satisfying sting.

"Who asked you anyway, brace-face?" Philip's not-so-brilliant retort was delivered with a hard chest bump against Jamie's left arm. Leatherneck didn't mind their bickering; in his experience, that's what boys do.

"I remember one time when Lee was forced to stay put." Leatherneck paused considering how to tell this particular story. Some of Lee's past was classified for government purposes, and some of it was classified for personal reasons. The cat-fight in the women's barracks wasn't precisely Lee's fault, but comparing the sexploits of the hot intelligence officer wouldn't have been possible without him. Lee was confined to base while the incident was being investigated, and then banned from base until tempers cooled. The marine's drawl deepened as he settled into story mode. "He had just finished a one-man mission in 'Nam and, shortly after getting picked up, his helicopter pilot had gotten seriously wounded. It was a tense flight, but they made it back just fine. There were some, ah..., personnel issues that kept him confined to base for a while, and Ace, well, he just decided it would be a good time to learn how to fly a chopper. If his pilot ever became unable to fly, he wanted to be able to take over. He never became licensed – that would have required annual requalifying tests and such – but he's able to do what needs to be done. I figure, him and computers are pretty much the same thing. If he's chained to one long enough, pretty soon you'll start believing that he invented the cussed things."

Amid more banter and laughter, the tools were put away and the tarp was replaced over the car. "You're thinking you'll get the front windshield by the end of the week, right?" Philip asked.

"Actually, I'm thinking it might have arrived today and be waiting for me at the office. That's one of the things I need to check on. Or it should be here first thing in the morning. We can plan to put it in tomorrow after school." Leatherneck replied easily.

The two boys exchanged knowing looks and turned to face the marine, shoulder to shoulder. "So, that means mom and Lee are coming back sooner than expected," Jamie challenged.

The marine wiped his face with a bandana then stuffed it in the pocket of his grease stained, navy coveralls - partly to stall for time to think of an answer, and partly to hide his grin. Amanda's boys were quick. "Was it that obvious?" he asked.

"You weren't so obvious. The car is a great excuse. But Ms. Desmond returning a pie pan was a stretch, and then she talked with brace-face for an hour about dorky movies, which was pretty bogus." Philip body-slammed "brace-face" to be sure the insult was noticed.

"That was better than drooling at her for an hour like you did. How gross can ya get?" Jamie returned the favor with an elbow to the ribs.

"And then the biggest clue was that geek, Mr. Beaman, who brought Jamie an astronomy poster. Oh, get real! He just happened to find it in his closet the week our folks are gone and couldn't wait to bring it to Jamie." The harder body-slam was unsuccessful because Jamie stepped forward just in time to make Philip miss his target. The older boy's fancy footwork prevented him from falling. The teens grinned at their successful analysis and their rough play.

After Grandma moved to her own apartment, the two had chafed at the idea that they needed a babysitter when mom and Lee went out of town. This two-week mission was the first time the teens had been left with a small measure of independence. The deal was that they had to do their homework, cook all meals, and finish kitchen clean-up before 9:00. At that time, Dotty would come over to supervise their progress, replenish the groceries, and spend the night. They were responsible for getting themselves up, fed and out the door on school days. The hitch was that Amanda had been uneasy leaving the boys completely unsupervised for 5 or 6 hours every afternoon and even longer on weekends. So the office had worked out a rotation for someone to stop by and check on things. When she and Lee made their nightly check-in, she could get the updates on her family at the same time.

"An astronomy poster?" Leatherneck asked, shaking his head. He thought that was a really lame excuse, too.

"Actually, it was a bad cover story for checking on us, but it's a cool poster. The stars are painted so that they glow in the dark." Jamie felt clever for detecting the "checking on the boys" activities, but he really _did_ like the poster and didn't want Mr. Beaman to get in trouble for his gift.

"Can you tell us why they're coming back so soon? I mean, uh... are they okay?" Philip voiced the concern that the two boys always had, but seldom put into words.

"Well, you guessed right that they are coming back tomorrow or the next day. I don't know any more than that, myself. If anything really bad had happened, I would have heard. You can rest easy about that." Leatherneck watched as both boys turned away, suddenly busy. He remembered being at that awkward age when caring about someone else seemed sissy. Considering that something "really bad" _had_ happened to their mom a year ago, they were understandably concerned whenever she left for several days.

 **Next day**

Both boys hurried home after school, eager to see their mom and Lee, but wary of letting it show. Leatherneck arrived with the car windshield and directed Philip in removing the old windshield and gasket, and cleaning out the frame. Jamie was doing homework at the kitchen table, the telephone at his elbow. Every time the phone rang, work stopped, inside the house and out, until it was clear that the caller was not Lee or Amanda.

Leatherneck was slightly worried and hoped that the boys wouldn't notice. The office was unusually quiet today about the Stetson's mission. Normally, there would be _some_ chatter about the case, and the silence made him wonder _who_ was hiding _what_ details. Since the Stetsons hadn't arrived at the Agency prior to his leaving this afternoon, he suspected that they would probably not get home until tomorrow. Still, he hoped that Amanda would get to call her boys, before the tedious business of being debriefed.

He and Philip had positioned the gasket around the windshield when Billy's car pulled up in the driveway. Fearing that it might be bad news, Leatherneck started towards the car, leaving Philip to hold the heavy windshield. At that moment, the phone rang and Jamie's relieved, "Hi mom!" broke the tension. Philip lowered the windshield to the ground and gently leaned it against the Mustang, then hurried inside.

As Philip crowded close to share the phone receiver, Amanda was saying, "We're fine and I sure have missed you! Has everything been okay?"

"Sure, mom, everything's fine. Will you be coming home tonight or do you have to finish reports before they'll let you leave?"

"We'll both be there in time for dinner. Who's cooking tonight?"

"You're in luck there, mom. It's my turn again."

"We'll be looking forward to it. Now, listen, I need you to do some things before I get there."

"Okay."

"You know how to unfold the sofa bed in the living room. Get the green sheets from the upstairs closet and make up the sofa bed. Lee's had a minor injury and he'll need to sleep down there for a few nights. There are extra pillows on the top shelf of that closet and he might need three or four. Just bring them all downstairs. I need to hang up; the doctor's finishing with Lee now. He's really fine. We'll give you the details when we get home."

"Bye, mom." The call ended on a subdued note ( _minor_ injury?), but the boys felt important with a job to do. They vented their emotions by jostling each other as they raced upstairs and took turns jumping high enough to snatch the pillows one by one from the top shelf. Leatherneck and Billy entered the house to find them wrestling sheets onto the sofa bed. Both men carried a stack of books.

"It looks like Ace is gonna have that down time we talked about yesterday," Leatherneck laughed.

Billy explained, "He got shot across the seat of his pants. Put two bullet holes in both cheeks. He won't be able to lie on his back for several days, and probably won't sit for a month." Billy's big laugh filled the room. "His job during that time will be to master these manuals, and I'll assign him to teach computer classes until he's cleared for active duty. That's plenty of time and the right motivation to become our best computer jockey."

 **The End**

Author's Note: Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) was shot in the butt while hunting (total of 4 bullet holes - two in each cheek). He thought he was being attacked by Indians and he staggered back to the boat to get help. He tried to lead the counter-attack, but could not sustain his efforts, and returned to the boat. He performed first aid on himself and later that day continued with his party down-river to rejoin Clark.


End file.
